Media

  • Plain talk about plane trees

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    The Bristol Post is not particularly renowned for the quality of its journalism.

    This point of view was borne out by its report today on public works in Weston-super Mare, which features the following paragraph:

    The species to be planted include silver birch, hazel, Scots pine, Himalayan plain, London plain and common alder. Work on removing the trees is due to start this week.

    Himalayan plain? London plain? The Post should be sent to sit in shame in homophone corner until it learns the difference between a plain tree and a plane tree and promises not to make such elementary sub-editing errors in future.

    However, the Post is not only guilty of falling victim to homophony and failing to do a bit of basic sub-editing. Indeed it is also guilty of churnalism – “a form of journalism in which press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media in order to meet increasing pressures of time and cost without undertaking further research or checking”.

    Checking back on the source of the story in question, one arrives at a North Somerset Council news item of 20th February 2013, where – lo and behold – the following sentence appears:

    The species to be planted include silver birch, hazel, Scots pine, Himalayan plain, London plain and common alder.

    Thus the anonymous Post hack quoted initially has merely repeated the error of the original author of the news in North Somerset.

    This blog has pointed out before that North Somerset is a strange place (posts passim), but having an illiterate write news on the council website is just plain perverse.

  • A Shropshire republican writes

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

    As an exiled Salopian, the Shropshire Star forms part of my regular online reading.

    Imagine my surprise earlier when I discovered that there is a spark of republicanism in my home town of Market Drayton, as shown by the following letter from Draytonian Andrew Lovatt.

    While thousands of the Queen’s subjects are born into poverty, her third great-grandchild will be born into a position of high status and comfort.

    The royal inequality gap is in direct contradiction to everything that 21st century Britain claims to stand for.

    Keep up the good work, Andrew! You probably feel quite lonely. 🙂

  • I write for Bristol24/7

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Tech

    Through my role as secretary of Bristol Wireless, I’ve been involved in the campaign against the Government’s proposed Communications Data Bill and today had the article below posted on local news website Bristol24/7.

    In June of this year, the Government published its draft Communications Data Bill, dubbed a Snoopers’ Charter by opponents. Under this Bill, internet service providers and mobile operators such as Virgin Media, BT and Vodafone would be obliged to log the internet, email, telephone and text message use and retain this data for 12 months.

    Furthermore, the draft Bill also seeks to demand communications data from such social media sites as Facebook and Twitter that are based overseas, as well as search engines like Google.

    As such, these powers are overly broad, infringe the citizen’s right to privacy and would divert crucial funds away from other areas of policing at a time when front-line policing is generally facing cuts of some 20%. The serious criminals, terrorists and paedophiles, who the Home Office says this Bill targets, would still be able to avoid detection by taking fairly simple measures. By taking such a broad brush approach, the population of the UK would be transformed from a nation of some 60million citizens to a population of some 60m criminal suspects.

    A Joint Committee of MPs and peers was set up to examine the draft Bill. On Tuesday, December 10, the Joint Committee report was published and delivered a damning verdict on the Home Office. It says the Home Office gave “fanciful and misleading” evidence for “sweeping” powers that go beyond what they “need or should”.

    Furthermore, the Joint Committee’s report also criticised the projected £1.8 bn. cost of implementing the Bill’s proposals, reckoning that this cost will probably be exceeded “by a considerable margin”. In view of central government’s past record on IT projects, the Committee’s assessment will more than likely prove true.

    There is no doubt that current laws to monitor communications are outdated and were not drafted for a digital age where there is more personal data being created than ever before. However, the Communications Data Bill is not the answer. It should not simply be redrafted with minor modifications and resubmitted to Parliament, as the Prime Minister and Home Secretary seem committed to doing, judging from their public statements since publication of the Joint Committee’s damning report.

    Even under the present arrangements, 600 public bodies have potential access to citizens’ data and 500,000 surveillance requests were made last year.

    The UK needs a full review of surveillance laws before any new laws – such as the Communications Data Bill – are drawn up. The review should consider how pervasive and personal data has become. It should also examine how to bring about proportionate and appropriate powers for the collection, storage and use of our data.

    The Home Office has shown itself to be unable to strike an appropriate balance between security and privacy and appears to be wholly ignorant of the technical issues involved with policing online crime, such as the use of encryption. It should take part in a review but must not be allowed to lead it.

    The Communications Data Bill is akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and, if implemented would place the UK on a par with repressive regimes like Iran and China, which HM Government likes to criticise for their illiberal measures without being able to recognise their own hypocrisy.

    I would urge everyone with an interest in their own privacy and liberties as a citizen to lobby their MPs to kill this Bill and request a review of surveillance laws as outlined above.

  • Bristol Post exclusive: city has a literate cricket ground

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Social Media

    Ever since I arrived in Bristol, I’ve been both dismayed and amused in equal amounts by the abysmal standards of English in the local press.

    This ancient tradition’s greatest proponent has been the alleged local paper of record, the Bristol Evening Post, whose publication is now reduced to 5 days a week as sales of the dead tree edition decline; its name has likewise been truncated to the Bristol Post.

    Today the Post revealed an exclusive. Bristol has a literate cricket ground, presumably able to speak and write, as evidenced by the following Post quote:

    The ground, in Nevil Road, St Andrew’s, released a statement this morning.

    If the ground really does talk, Gloucestershire [County] CC should be very proud of it since this particular skill is far more impressive than its cricketing record. 😉

    Update: 6th November 2012: Jon Eccles has since remarked that the County Ground is “the first sports facility of any kind to pass the Turing test“.

  • Outsourcing news: 98 subtitlers resign

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    It not just the UK’s Ministry of Justice that’s having trouble with outsourcing (posts passim). Over in Finland Broadcast Text International may now find it hard to fulfil its contracts following the mass resignation of 98 subtitlers.

    Finnish blog Av-kääntäjät reports that the 98 subtitlers resigned after being outsourced to Broadcast Text International by major commercial broadcasting company, MTV Media.

    All told, a total of 110 subtitlers working under freelance contracts for MTV Media were outsourced on 1st October to BTI International, a subsidiary of Broadcast Text International. Under Finnish law, outsourced employees have a right to resign without notice during the first month after the deal and 98 subtitlers have consequently jumped ship, voicing concerns about their being outsourced to a company that pays its current subtitlers minimal wages, forces them to become entrepreneurs instead of employees, claims copyright to all subtitles produced and refuses to engage in collective bargaining.

    Broadcast Text International has not commented so far and has also not responded to the concerns voiced by the subtitlers or responded to invitations from trade unions to open negotiations.

    Hat tip: Richard McCarthy

  • Put icons back in church where they belong

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    Once upon a time the only place one would see anything “iconic” was in a Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox Church. A gilded frame, copious amounts of gold leaf and a halo or haloes were usually involved.

    However nowadays – much to my dismay – something just has to exist to be regarded as an icon: no veneration is necessary and the word has become hackneyed and synonymous with lazy journalism, as in this piece from today’s Bristol Post, where the undeserving victim is traditional British fish and chips.

    Let’s see what the Guardian Style Guide says about iconic:

    In danger of losing all meaning after an average three appearances a day in the Guardian and Observer, employed to describe anything vaguely memorable or well-known – from hairdressers, storm drains in Los Angeles and the Ferrero Rocher TV ads to Weetabix, the red kite and the cut above the eye David Beckham sustained after being hit by a flying boot kicked by Sir Alex Ferguson. Our advice, even if our own writers rarely follow it, is to show a little more thought, and restraint, in using this term.

    Turning to icon, the Style Guide lists the following objects which were described in the Guardian as “iconic” in a single fortnight in 2010:

    Archaeopteryx
    bluefin tuna
    Castro’s cigar
    David Beckham wearing an anti-Glazer scarf
    Grace Kelly in casual wear
    Imperial War Museum North
    Liberty prints
    limestone stacks in Thailand
    Nigel Slater
    Mad Men
    Variety
    the John Hughes films Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science
    postboxes
    prints of the Che Guevara image
    Stephen Fairey’s Obama Hope design
    the parliamentary constituency of Hove
    the Brandenburg Gate
    Bach’s St Matthew Passion
    a community-owned wind turbine
    Kraft cheese slices
    salmon farming
    the blue and white stripes of Cornishware pottery
    Penarth Pavilion, Cardiff
    the Norwegian church and Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay
    a multimillion-pound arena in Leeds
    a “rock-built engine house at Bottalack near St Just”
    the Royal Albert Hall
    wind turbines (“iconic renewable energy technology”)
    Wembley Arena
    the video for Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

    This abuse of language has gone on far too long. Let’s put icons back where they belong: in an Orthodox church, in a gilt frame and covered in gold leaf; is that too much to ask?

  • Contemporary BBC English: “… speaking through a translator”

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    For as long as I can remember, the BBC has always prided itself on the quality of its English.

    However, I seriously doubt whether it deserves its reputation as a guardian of the English language any more.

    My biggest disappointment usually occurs when listening to the news on Radio 4. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve fumed at the use of the phrase “spoken through a translator”. It also annoys my fellow translators (and no doubt our interpreter colleagues too) to an equal extent. Such terminological inaccuracy does not do dear old Auntie any favours.

    We linguists earn our crust on the basis of our precise use of terminology and there’s a real distinction between the work done by translators and that done by interpreters. Indeed one might go as far as to assert that they’re different skills, even though the outcome is the same: enabling communication between people who lack the capability to understand what another is communicating in another language.

    For the benefit of passing BBC staff, here’s a brief explanation of the difference between interpreting and translation: interpreting deals with the spoken word, translation with the written word.

    That’s easy to remember, isn’t it? 🙂

    Needless to say, my heart soars and a smile of relief crosses my face when Auntie gets the terminology right and I hear the words: “(insert name of prominent person), speaking through an interpreter, …”.

    Furthermore, the geek side of me groans inwardly when the likes of Radio 4’s You and Yours and Woman’s Hour regularly ask listeners to email the programmes involved ‘through the website’, but that’s a matter for another post entirely (as are the manifold sins of Auntie’s TV programme sub-titlers). 🙂

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